


forget-me-nots

by intertwingular



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Character Death, Gen, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, because its viktor, don't ask me why it just fit, i slipped yuzuru in as a stuffy medical dude, im a terrible person, merry goddang christmas heres ur angst, nobody skates, phichit is a tech major, probably piano w/a double in composing, theres a thing about murphys law in here because i love that, they're all in college, viktor is a competitive pianist and a music major, whoops, whoops sorry yuzu, yuuri's a organic bio major
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 22:14:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9036446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intertwingular/pseuds/intertwingular
Summary: "unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense." - ee. cummings (alternatively, a study on humanity and love, and a questioning of how something so grand could hurt so much.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [solidarity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/solidarity/gifts).



> merry goddamn christmas, have some angst....whoops??? this ran away from me, i'll admit. 
> 
> please listen to [from here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQPUF4Wh3_w) by adib sin and cae for more feelings. 
> 
> happy holidays! blame this on jun. (sorry that pas de deux's fifth chapter is so late.)

Yuuri’s in his third year of college, and while the workload is hell, he’s surviving. The hustle and bustle is comforting, in it’s own anxiety inducing way, and Phichit, ever a steady rock against the shore, is more than enough to get Yuuri through the day. 

But, for as much as Yuuri relies on Phichit to keep him from breaking down into an anxiety filled puddle, he can’t rely on Phichit to get him out of this. Not if he actually wants to graduate. 

Also, art supplies are _really expensive_. Especially for a college student, working part time in a bookstore. Yuuri’s not going to back out now, and that’s mostly because it would be a massive waste of his money. When is he ever going to use these color pencils and...charcoal (what the _fuck_ ) again? 

Never. He’s an organic biology major. _Never_. 

Yuuri tugs on his backpack strap once more, and winces as the rattle of aluminum against whatever binders he has in his bag spills dully out from the thick material. He hopes that doesn’t mean that he’s broken any of his new supplies. Yuuri’s not replacing them if he has. 

He takes a deep breath. It’s _fine_. From what scant experience he has with fine art students, they tend to be either too lofty to speak to you once it’s evident that you’re _not_ , in fact, an art student, or they’re just too tired to actually give a shit. (Yuuri can relate to the latter. So, so much. He’s been tired enough at one point to not actually care during a dissection. _Astounding_.) 

It’ll be fine. Probably. 

Running a hand through his hair, Yuuri pushes open the door to the art studio, and quietly wonders how hungover art students must feel coming into the room, first thing in the morning. The entire studio is so _bright_ , with nearly floor to ceiling windows covering almost all the walls. 

(There’s one student here just as early as Yuuri, sunglasses placed stubbornly over her eyes as she nurses a mug of some caffeinated drink, (It might be spiked. It probably is.) and Yuuri thinks, briefly, _ah. That’s how they do it._ ) 

He slides into one of the many empty wooden stools scattered in a messy, lopsided circle around an empty platform, setting his backpack down, and laying the (expensive as _fuck_ ) set of colored pencils and charcoal down on the little ledge on the easel. 

Yuuri takes the time to look around the art studio, soaking in the early morning sunlight, the scent of oil paint and paper, and lets out a breath. It’s a calming sort of ambience that pervades the entire room, soothing and calming to Yuuri’s sleep deprived mind. 

He lays the pad of cheap sketch paper Phichit had found in a bargain bin at the local crafts store and settles in to wait.

* * *

**phicheeto:** how’s art class????? 

**phicheeto:** (￢‿￢ ) 

**katsukidon:** there’s nobody here

 **katsukidon:** discounting that one girl in the corner, drinking something 

**katsukidon:** i’m pretty sure it’s alcohol 

**phicheeto:** you should ask her for some!!!

 **katsukidon:** wtf why 

**phicheeto:** maybe it’ll help ur art skills 

**katsukidon:** what art skils??????????

 **phicheeto:** exactly. 

**katsukidon:** wow rude 

**phicheeto:** ily!!! 

**phicheeto:** yuuri

 **hicheeto:** yuuriiiii

 **phicheeto:** no come back im sorry i love uuu

 **phicheeto:** yUURI NOOO

* * *

Yuuri sets down his phone, and runs another hand through his hair. The rest of the room has filled up while he was texting Phichit, and though all the stools are all full, there are several students with no art supplies, spread out amidst the room. Yuuri thinks he recognizes one of the girls - she might be in his dissection class, but then again, there might be multiple redheads on campus. Yuuri doesn’t know. - but the one that seems to stand out the most is a man, his blond hair so pale it looks more like silver in the sunlight. There’s a pair of clearly expensive aviators perched just behind his one, swooping bang, and as Yuuri looks at him one last time, he swears that his cheekbones could actually cut a man. 

(The way his tongue peeks out, ever so slightly as he scrolls through his phone does not help in painting the picture either.) 

Yuuri decides he’s better off looking away before it gets weird, or the man catches him staring.

* * *

His name is Viktor, and the teacher has him standing atop the podium, and he’s going to be, for the day, the class model. At least until the teacher sends each student off with a model to do individual sketches. 

Yuuri picks up his mechanical pencil - because, honestly, _fuck_ the charcoal, it just kept crumbling on his hands and making such a _mess_ of everything, and Yuuri’s not going to deal with that - and begins to sketch out lazy circles, the teacher’s voice all but white noise in the back of his mind. 

Viktor looks bored out of his mind. He’s sitting on a small, plastic chair someone has placed upon the podium, one leg crossed atop the other, hands clasped over his knee, and as Yuuri struggles - what the _fuck_ is anatomy anyways - to get the correct placement and curve of a bent arm, he looks up at Viktor one more time and stops dead. 

The other man is staring straight at him, and Yuuri has the oddest urge to duck his head back behind the easel. Instead, of course, because Yuuri is not _entirely_ a coward (that’s a lie) he drags his eyes quickly up and down the curve of Viktor’s left arm, and _then_ ducks back behind the easel. 

He pretends his cheeks aren’t bright red, and accidentally stabs a hole into his cheap sketch paper. 

It can’t get much worse than this. 

(He’s so, so _wrong_. It’s almost funny.)

* * *

“Viktor Nikiforov...and Yuuri Katsuki.” Yuuri looks up from his phone, and the video Phichit has sent him of his four hamsters, (Kha Kai, Gaeng Daeng, Moo Saap, and Chilli. Yuuri named the last one.) who aren’t allowed in Michigan’s dorms, and are currently still living with Phichit’s aunt and uncle. They’re doing well, but it look like Kha Kai might be expecting. Phichit’s aunt and uncle are not nearly as ecstatic as their nephew is. 

The teacher is assigning models to students, and if Viktor heading over towards him is any indication, it looks like Yuuri’s been assigned to work with Viktor. 

Yuuri wants to bury his head into his hands and cry, but he’s _supposed_ to be pretending to be a functioning member of society, and thus, can’t do that in public, so instead, he gives a wobbly nod in Viktor’s general direction, and lets his mind wander to a more comfortable, familiar area. Like Murphy's Law. 

Murphy’s Law, first stated by Alfred Holt, in 1977, during an engineering society’s meeting, quite simply put, boils down to this - _whatever can go wrong, will go wrong._ Luck is a wretched thing, that, in the eyes of the scientific community, (maybe barring ghost hunters, who are _barely_ a part of the scientific community anyways) doesn’t even really exist. Things happen, and luck will have nothing to do with it. But Murphy’s Law is a fundamental part of human existence as a whole. Whatever can go wrong always goes wrong, and humanity comes to expect that. 

This is a case like that. 

Yuuri isn’t certain what it’s going to mean for his poor heart, because while Viktor holds no sexual attraction for him, aesthetically speaking, Yuuri can safely say that Viktor is the most handsome man he’s seen in his entire life. It’s in the way he carries himself, with an easy, effortless grace, and the way his cheekbones are sharper than any knife in the dorm kitchen. But, yes. Murphy’s Law. The worst thing that could happen, happens. 

_Be reasonable,_ some vaguely put together part of Yuuri argues, _it can’t possibly be that bad._

“I look forwards to working with you,” Viktor says, smiling - though it doesn’t reach his eyes, and some _other_ (lovesick?? no, that’s not it) part of Yuuri realises that he’d want Viktor to smile with his eyes, just once - and Yuuri’s heart drops somewhere into his left boot. 

The vaguely put together part of him shuts up. 

Yuuri smiles weakly, and shakes Viktor’s hand limply, and thinks, against all rational thought, that it can’t get any worse. 

(It does. _Oh god,_ it does.)

* * *

Yuuri’s...not certain of when it was that he fell in love with Viktor. 

(That’s a lie, of course. Such a _huge, huge_ lie, because how could he ever forget that day?) 

But he remembers waking up, on a Saturday, the first day of winter break, his last final over, and thinking of how he would, somehow, miss the art studio, with it’s floor to almost-ceiling windows, and the way the sunlight filtered in because the teacher always refused to use the curtains, even in the pouring rain, and wondering if sunlight off of fresh snow would come even close to creating a shade of silver remotely close to Viktor’s hair color. 

(And he knows it won’t just be the art studio he’ll miss, it’s the feeling of Viktor’s hair brushing against his cheeks as he coos over how terrible Yuuri’s art is, the feeling of Viktor’s skin under his hands, and Yuuri _knows_ that they’re going to still go for coffee every Thursday, as they’ve always done since being partnered in late August, and he _knows_ that Viktor will be sending him texts at two am from one of the music rooms sequestered away in some far away corner of campus, just as he knows that he’ll run over there in his puppy patterned pajamas, and oversized sleepshirt she stole from Mari - the one that reads _queen_ in bright, white bold, against the pale purple - but still. Yuuri knows he’ll never be allowed as close as he was during those 45 minutes of quiet and calm. 

It aches a little, when he thinks of it, like a lump in his chest that he can’t pound out with logic and sheer force, but Yuuri lies back in bed and tries to convince himself that he’ll be alright. Seeing Viktor is enough.) 

Yuuri lies on his bed for longer, tilting his head to look out the window near his bed, at all the snow littering the ground, and sloughing off the trees, all pure, bright white, and something seems to force its way up his chest and throat, and Yuuri coughs, harsh and wet. The sensation fades for a second, before coming back, with a ferocity it hadn’t had before, that sends Yuuri scrambling out of bed, tripping over his feet and discarded sleep slippers, and towards the door, trying to reach the hall’s bathroom before he can vomit - but it’s too late. Yuuri falls to his knees just next to the door, and doubles over, curling into himself as he coughs and coughs, flower petals, as bright and white as the snow falling outside fall from his mouth and into his hands, until they spill out the sides, fluttering around Yuuri, settling in the creases of his pajama pants, and the spaces between his thighs. 

And it’s horror and joy and a terrible, _terrible_ grief that drives Yuuri to tears, because these petals mean so much now. They mean that he’s in _love_ , something he had thought wasn’t possible, wasn’t for him, not when his mind was full of music and scientific theorems and worries upon worries building up until all that remained was a looping cry, forever playing underneath every thought Yuuri has ever thought. They mean that the person he loves doesn’t love him back. They mean that Yuuri doesn’t have a lot of time left. 

They mean that Yuuri has a new purpose, and a new deadline to go with it.

* * *

The coughs pass, and Yuuri begins to quietly tidy up the flower petals, disposing of them in a plastic baggie that he throws into the trash can, because his teachers have drilled lab rules very firmly into his mind and being, and until Yuuri can figure out what kind of flower the petals come from, he’s going to assume they’re toxic in some way. 

Yuuri sits down at his desk, and cracks open his laptop, and begins to open up tabs, logging into school accounts to access research journals and archives, opening up his Spotify to turn on soft piano music, and opens up a Word document, and begins to type up a new research proposal for his lab teacher. 

He lets his mind wander while he goes through the delicate wording, and Yuuri wonders, how exactly he’s going to tell Phichit this. 

_Sorry to alarm you, but I’m dying, sorry. I’m probably not going to last until the end of April, whoops._

Yuuri coughs up more flower petals, and goes to get a dish to hold them in while he works. 

(Phichit comes back while he’s engrossed in life expectancy research, and perusing through diagrams of how the flower grows within a person’s body, where it’s located, root placement, etc, and the other boy screams at the sight of the growing pile of flower petals collecting in the dish on Yuuri’s desk. 

Yuuri shuts his laptop, and leads Phichit over to one of the beds, and lets the other hold him tight, as they watch _The King and the Skater_ for the sixth millionth time, and he doesn’t try to convince himself that this is all for Phichit. Secretly, Yuuri is glad that he didn’t have to stumble through telling Phichit about the flowers, and he’s just happy. He’ll have this, for as long as his body can keep moving.)

* * *

(“Lily of the valley.” 

“What do those mean?” 

“You make my life complete.” 

They don’t say anything else, but the next day, Phichit comes back to the dorm with a single azalea. Yuuri takes a plastic tumbler from their cabinets and fills it with water. Morbidly, he wonders if he will wilt before the azalea does.)

* * *

The first Tuesday after winter break is over, when the flower of the day is a tea rose, dew still on some of the yellow-pink petals, Yuuri meets with his lab teacher. 

“You’re changing your lab proposal?” She asks, as she sits down with him, reading through his proposal over the top of her horn rimmed glasses. Her graying hair is pulled up into a severe bun, and the single glittering pin is shaped into a delicate red flower. ( _Poppy_ , Yuuri thinks, tracing the katakana for it into his palm) “Why the sudden interest in _hanahaki_ , Yuuri?” 

“I’m dying,” he says softly, running a hand through his hair. 

She sets down the packet of notes, and leans closer to him, hands clasped underneath her chin. “Why not just get the surgery for it then? It would be a lot simpler than racing to find a cure without removing the love entirely.” 

Yuuri’s thought about that, especially on the days where it feels like any breath could definitely be his last, when it feels like there are just too many petals coming up, and there’s blood too. But getting the surgery? It’s _not_ an option - and really, when was it ever - because for all that Yuuri is timid around strangers, for all that he sequesters himself away when the world is too big and too _much_ , he has always loved as fast, bright and hot as a flame. To Yuuri, not loving Viktor, willingly killing his love for Viktor just isn’t an option. He won’t _let_ it be an option. 

“It’s just - it’s not something I can do. Not as who I am now,” Yuuri admits, letting out a congested breath. 

His lab teacher smiles at him, sad and slow, absently rubbing at where Yuuri knows that most surgeons start the incision for removing the flower from the patient’s lungs, and Yuuri remembers that the wedding band and engagement ring that hang off a chain around her neck were on her fingers once, and he smiles bittersweetly at her and her lost love, and excuses himself. 

(She emails him back that night, while Yuuri and Phichit are marathoning all of _Neon Genesis Evangelion: Q,_ with a list of researchers to contact, and a recommendation for a certain type of congestion prescription to help with his breathing. He’s thankful.)

* * *

On Thursday, Phichit leaves him a yellow tulip, and Yuuri slides it into the travel mug with the rest of the flowers. There are so many now, and sadly, the azalea has begun to wilt, and Yuuri changes the water out of worry, fingering the petals that have begun to wrinkle and brown. 

Yuuri smooths down the material of his cardigan and scarf, straightens his glasses, and smiles at Viktor as he sweeps into their cafe, accompanied by a gust of cool, winter air, and the scent of the music room piano (like dust and teakwood, Yuuri has told him. Viktor had smiled, at it was the first one Yuuri had seen that had reached Viktor’s eyes.) 

“Yuuri! How was your winter holiday?” Viktor is full of cheer, his eyes bright and smiling, cheeks and ears pinked from the chill. He looks away to read through the cafe’s specials for the day, before looking back at Yuuri with a heart-shaped grin. It’s so _unfair._

_I’m in love with you,_ is on the tip of Yuuri’s tongue. _It’s killing me, but I’m in love with you._ But Yuuri knows he won’t say it. He won’t cause Viktor pain, because Yuuri will always refuse to get the surgery that would save his life, and he’s going to _die_ , without a doubt. 

He settles for a “good!” that smiles on its own, and sounds fake to Yuuri’s ears, and clearly to Viktor’s as well, but the man doesn’t push, and instead reaches over, squeezing Yuuri’s hand that lies limp atop the table between them, and knocks their knees together. 

“Let me order us some coffee, and then, I want to take you to this new arcade that opened up a couple blocks down,” Viktor enthuses, pushing a stray lock of hair behind his ear. “You can show me your dancing.” 

Yuuri vaguely regrets telling Viktor about his childhood (more like life-long) ballet lessons - and the fact that he still dances in one of the school’s abandoned dance rooms when he needs a destresser. 

“Sure,” he says, as Viktor stands to go order. “I’ll be sure to thoroughly wipe the floor with you, then.” 

Viktor laughs, bright and clear as a bell, and turns to get on line for coffee. “You can _try_ , certainly,” he calls back, joy lacing through every word. 

Yuuri pretends that he doesn’t crumple into himself when Viktor doesn’t look back. He pretends it doesn’t really hurt. It doesn’t. _It doesn’t_. 

(Yuuri coughs up flower petals like he’s drowning in them when Viktor’s back is turned, and he desperately ignores the pitying stares coming from all directions in the cafe. He needs more time. 

Just a little longer has become his new prayer, it seems.)

* * *

Yuuri collapses for the first time at one in the morning, in a research lab halfway across Detroit, analyzing different chemical compounds and their reactions with a simulated _hanahaki_ patient. He falls to his knees, flowers spilling from his mouth faster than he can get them out, and as it goes on, they become bloodier and bloodier, and hoarsely, Yuuri calls for the overseer, the main researcher he’s working with here, but it’s too late. 

Yuuri can feel his vision darkening, blackening and blurring around the edges, and he can hear the clatter of sneakers against linoleum, and the head researcher (well, overseer) yelling for someone to call an ambulance. His mind wanders to the flower Phichit had left in the morning, a white heather, it’s petals soft underneath Yuuri’s fingers, and to the azalea, shriveled and dead, but still lingering in that travel mug, if only because he doesn’t have the heart to throw it away.

* * *

“You’re still refusing treatment.” 

It’s not a question. Phichit slides into his hospital room the next day, holding the mug of flowers, topped off with a new one - a pink carnation - and Yuuri is sad to see that Phichit has thrown away all the flowers that died. The azalea is gone. 

“I’m not going to lose this, Phichit,” Yuuri whispers, voice nearly gone. “I _can’t._ ” 

Phichit looks like he’s about to cry, as he settles next to Yuuri’s hospital bed, on the uncomfortable chair, and he grips Yuuri’s hand in his, tight enough that he could break Yuuri’s bones. “He doesn’t know what he’s missing,” Phichit says, voice raw and mourning, eyes hooded and dulling. “He doesn’t _know,_ Yuuri. You need to tell him.” The _please_ lingers between them, unsaid. 

“I won’t,” Yuuri says, a bittersweet smile curling across his lips. The bitterness he feels slips away, smooth and slick as silk, and he twists his hand to lace his fingers through Phichit’s. “I can’t do that to him.” 

“Okay,” Phichit whispers, and it looks like all the fight has been drained from him, and Yuuri regrets that of all the people in the world, Phichit has been stuck with him. Weak-willed Yuuri, who doesn’t care enough for his own health to live for those who do love him, who can only die for the one who does not. 

Yuuri bites his lip, and grips Phichit tighter. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. 

Phicht lets out a wet sob in response. “Don’t _say_ that.”

* * *

(By the time news reaches Viktor, he’s on a plane, halfway to Austria for a piano competition. His hands shake in his lap, and he is silently thankful that the entire plane is asleep, so the only person actually awake to see him curl into himself and sob like a child is a flight attendant, who looks away the minute Viktor starts crying. 

Yuuri passes away in his sleep two days later. Viktor wins the competition that day, and comes back to Yakov handing him his cell phone, and sweeping the young man into a hug. 

“I’m sorry. He passed in his sleep,” Yakov murmurs, voice low and heavy. 

Viktor lets the trophy drop from slack fingers as he crumples into Yakov. It all seems so _meaningless_ now. He can’t even show Yuuri it anymore.)

* * *

**Successful Hanahaki Cure Finished At Last**  
Stephen Cardoza, _New York Times,_ May 23rd, 2018 

_At last, those afflicted with the fatal_ Hanahaki _disorder, discovery attributed to renown Japanese medical researcher, Yuzuru Hanyu, 1945, can find a cure to their ails, without removing their love for the person entirely. Researchers from University of Michigan, Yale, and UCLA have finally finished in their combined efforts to create a cure for this disease. However, like any good research story, this one was not without loss._

_“We can only thank Yuuri Katsuki for kickstarting the research for this, really,” says Dr. Evgeniya Morozova, Yale. “Without his beginning research, I don’t believe that anyone would have really started a cure like this. We were satisfied with being able to just cut out the root of the problem. Katsuki took it a step further.”_

_Yuuri Katsuki is not a household name - not like the names behind this massive medical miracle are. As a matter of fact, Katsuki will not even be appearing to receive the Nobel Peace Prize these researchers will be receiving, come December 10th. This is due to the fact that Katsuki himself passed away from_ Hanahaki _while beginning research for the project._

 _“He came to me, right after winter holidays, and told me he wanted to switch his finals research project to research work on a cure for_ Hanahaki, _” says Professor Mina Yuan, University of Michigan. “(Katsuki) had contracted it at one point during winter holidays, and was adamant in not receiving treatment. He was one of my most brilliant students.”_

_Katsuki passed away at the Detroit Medical Center on February 10th, 2016, though his research lived on without him. However, we can only thank Katsuki for persisting, even after many had given up, to give the so many people who refuse treatment due to their discomfort with forcibly removing their love for another the hope to see another sunrise._

_**To read more on Yuuri Katsuki, go to page B2.** _

* * *

(“They finished your research, you know.” 

Viktor reaches out, and traces the lettering on the tombstone, the warm spring breeze caressing his cheek, and throwing his hair around playfully. “They’re putting a Nobel Peace Prize to your name, too.” 

_Yuuri Katsuki, November 29th, 1994 - February 10th, 2017. “Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense.”_

“Until next year, Yuuri.” The name hovers in the air, a million words said and unsaid, lingering between a dead man and one still living (as much of a half-life as it was), and the space between them something larger than could be measured. 

Kneeling down, Viktor lies down a bundle of flowers, and traces the quote one last time, and turns, leaving the grave behind. 

The sweet scent of sweet pea blossoms and forget-me-nots fills the air, and if he were to look back, Viktor would see the shade of a young man, just barely in his twenties, smiling at the blossoms, messy black hair framing his face.)

* * *

(Phichit leans against Yuuri, and they watch the snow fall, bright and white against the darkness of night time. Phichit’s laptop is the only source of light amidst the darkness of their dorm room, and the grainy sound of the original _Star Trek_ TV series pours out from the speakers. The show is neglected for watching the snow. 

“Maybe, in another universe, he loves you.” 

Yuuri closes his eyes. “Another universe sounds nice.” 

“Maybe you’ll wake up there when you die.” A pause. Bones is yelling at Kirk on screen, a hypo in hand. “You deserve to.” 

But the world doesn’t work on what people deserve, so Yuuri lets out a breathy sigh, closes his eyes, and dreams of something that doesn’t hurt so much as this does.)

**Author's Note:**

> flower meanings
> 
> lily of the valley: "you make my life complete"  
> azalea: "take care of yourself for me"  
> tea rose: "i'll always remember"  
> yellow tulip: "there's sunshine in your smile"  
> white heather: "protection"  
> sweet pea: "good bye"  
> forget-me-not: "memories" 
> 
> merry christmas!!! if u cried im sorry this was not a light hearted fic.


End file.
